Re: [TIED] Sister

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2676
Date: 2000-06-19

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Carlos Padilla
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 2:18 PM
Subject: RE: [TIED] Sister

Yes, of course, as also in Latin inter-/exter-, or dexter/sinister. But the only actual binary oposition involving words in *-ter- among the IE family terms is *pxte:r/*maxte:r. The logical counterpart of *dHugxte:r is *su:nus, and *bHraxte:r is paired with *sweso:r. I'm far from sure that the *-(x)te:r of kinship terms has anything to do with the *-ter-o- of binary contrasts.
 
There are other similar suffixes, e.g. the *-ter-/*-tor- of agent nouns, or *-tr/*t(e)n found in heteroclitic neuters.
 
Piotr
 
 
Suffix *te-ro express a binary opposition, like latin magister / minister. It's the same we can find in comparative adjectives.
CARLOS PADILLA
Universidad de Valencia (Spain)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2000 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: [TIED] Sister

-sobrin- < - sewrrin- < - sewsrin- < -swesrin- ?
r=s (rhotacism or how do you call that?). The "b" appeared for the same reason why Henrik > Hendrik? or homine > hombre?
 
Sorry for my (stupid) question about the -ter in sister? But is the -ter/-ther in father, brother, mother and daughter the same IYO?
> Here's a little etymological game for all Cybalist members: The English words COUSIN and SISTER are ultimately related within Indo-European. How?    (solution tomorrow)    Piotr
 
cousin < Lat. consobrinus "mother's sister's child" < conswesrinos < -swesor-
 
Good! With vowel length marked, the Latin word is con-so:bri:nus. But how is so:br- derived from *swesr-? That's the really interesting part. Marc has shown the correct path but the game goes on.
 
Another question: is the -ter of sister the same as the -ter/-ther of father, brother, mother, daughter? (meaning something like "family member"?)
 
There is no etymological *-ter in sister. The original paradigm was *sweso:r (N.sg.)/*swesrós (Gen.sg.). In Germanic *sr > *str (cf. Greek rheuma : English stream), and the excrescent *t of *swistr- (in the oblique cases) was introduced in the nominative as well. The analogy of *duxt(a)r- certainly helped to interpret the *-tr- as a family-term suffix.
 
It is very likely that the consonantal stem *swesor- should be analysed as *swe-sor- with *swe- meaning 'one's own' and *-sor- being a very archaic feminising suffix -- older, in fact, than the feminine gender itself. Alternative proposals (such as Pisani's *su-esxr- 'one's own blood' or Szemerényi's *su(:)-esor- 'family-woman', with a different reconstruction of the feminising element) are less attractive because of various formal difficulties they lead to.
 
The insertion of *t in *sr occurred also in Balto-Slavic. Lithuanian still has the consonantal noun sesuo (< *seso:r, with a trivial simplification of the initial cluster), but in Slavic the word was "regularised" by attaching the normal feminine ending *-a: to the oblique stem: *sesr-a: > *sestra: (Russian sestra, Polish siostra).
 
Piotr